In U.S. Pat. No. 3,708,575, there is disclosed a method for the treatment of cardiac arrythmias, thrombi, atherosclerosis, cerebral infarcts, cerebral thromboses, coronary thromboses and cardiac infarcts in human beings, comprising administering an effective amount of an isotonic, sterile solution of glucuronoglycosaminoglycan hyaluronate lyase (hereinafter called GL) by intravenous, intraarterial or intrathecal injection into human beings being in need of said treatment.
Many of the hyaluronidase preparations previously available have contained very large amounts of other enzymatically-active materials, in addition to the enzyme which is actually responsible for the catalysis of the hydrolysis of hyaluronic acid. The heterogeneous nature of hyaluronidase is discussed in a paper by Greiling et al. (Z. physiol. Chem., 340, 243/1965).
The hyaluronidase preparations previously available have frequently been contaminated by large and variable amounts of other enzymes, such as .beta.-glucuronidase, N-acetyl-.beta.-hexosaminidase, aryl sulphatase A and aryl sulphatase B.
Processes for the preparation of very pure and highly active GL have been described, for example, in our British patent specification No. 1,060,513 and also by Borders and Raftery (J. Biol. Chem. 243, 3756-3762/1968). However, these known processes are too long and complicated to be economically useful for the production of GL on a large scale, and, consequently, there is a need to provide a more economic process for the preparation of very pure and highly-active GL.